Photo: Mike Berard
With a new album and an eye to the past, Corb Lund and the Hurtin’ Albertans saddle up for success.
Modern country music is a strange genre; most artists ride the fine line between insipid pop offerings and straight-up, quasi Texan-accented rock music. It’s arguable that country music as it exists today has little in common with the pioneering fathers who laid the foundation years ago. Thankfully, Alberta’s favourite native son, Tabers’ own Corb Lund, has returned to save the day with a new album. Entitled Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier! Lund and his backing band are following up on the massive success of last years Hair in my Eyes like a Highland Steer. But while that release focused on good times like poker, rodeo and a certain mud-lodged truck this album takes on a more somber tone. “It’s darker than the last record.” Lund says from the set of the first single’s video, “Highland Steer was mostly just a bunch of party songs, which is kind of fun, but some of my older stuff is a little darker and this is more like that.”
On the first single I Wanna Be in the Cavalry, Lund, a true-to-life cowboy and fourth-generation Albertan, seems to channel the ghosts of men who fought by horseback throughout history. “I’m kind of a sucker for historical stuff anyway. I like old stuff, so I tend to gravitate towards that.” Historical focus is part of Lund’s formula, a potent mix of folk-inspired lyrics concerning bronc’ riding, rodeo life and the whiskey-soaked rebel yell that at one time permeated outlaw country. It’s a natural progression for Lund, who got his start playing in the Canadian underground rock band The Smalls. “We’ve got a pretty good mix of people from aging punk rockers and folk-fest people and people who are songwriter fans, all the way to straight-ahead country fans too. We’ve got a pretty good number of legitimate cowboys that come to the show too…I think it’s kind of neat when you get a good mix like that.” In a country radio environment dominated by thinly-disguised pop music it’s refreshing to see Lund and his Hurtin’ Albertans holding it together for fans of true country. After all, country was never meant to be clean. “I think the audiences are actually, maybe ready for stuff that’s outside the lines. I think they find it interesting so that’s my mission.” Ride on good soldier, ride on. – Mike Berard